Now Pt.1

Woven

Threads of red and black

Of time and past

The burnt and fraying edges

Of the quickly sifted days

Streaming like the runners of a kite

Behind your lifting life

 

Do not

Become enthralled in the not yet

So wrapped up in the yet to be

That you blindly snub the daily

Flower opening

Of oportunity

The first steps of the stairs

To tomorrow

 

Do not

Yearn so longingly for yesteryear

Painting your dwelling the somber tones

Of melancholy, of remorseful green

Don’t go back there

 

The weeks gone by are meant to be

Left as columns, holding up your everbeating heart

Yet so often you Benjemin Button yourself to the wall

Trying to grow young

So you can relive the moment. It’s sick

 

Let bygones be bygones

You will never enter jr high again

And any kid in jr high

Would want to be the present you so bad

He would think you a fool for wanting to go back

You Marty Mcfly

Trying to die and be reborn

As the same person for a second try

 

You only get one life

One shot at this glorious, painful, short,long existence

Don’t abuse it

Live in the now

And let the flowing stream of moments

Weave the rug until

Halfway through your thirties

You make out enough of a picture

To happily continue on your way

Until the merry grave

Unsucessfully attempting to convince others

That they too should stop taking life so seriously

And instead go live it

 

Too many college grads

High on optimism

Crash like test-dummies into the wall of life

Only to pick up their broken pieces

And stand frozen at the prospect of repeating such a horror

 

They stand

 

Eagles

 

Edge of the nest

Hesitant to fly

 

Live your life with such flare and vigor

That they are drawn from the edge, not pushed

That they smell something in you they want to imitate

In this way, you will lead a generation beyond their stupid phones

And tailored snapchat image of themselves

 

They don’t know who they are

Setting countdown clocks on their iphones

And wasting time in the doctor’s office

Scrolling through pictures on their facebook from five years ago

 

Unable to relish the knife edge of this second

The shocking beauty of life

The elusive grandeur of that time account

Paid equally to all

Enjoyed only by a sparse few

While the majority line up at slot machines

Paying their seconds, minutes, and years

To hopefully strike big and make it all worth while

 

All along those bold lovers of life

Inhale the fragrance of the passing present

Called mundane by the exagerated moviestars

Who throw so many hashtags and faded filters on their reality

They can no longer appreciate undocumented breakfast

Or the sun’s first arrival over the eastern hills

Without alerting every social media outlet

 

Release

What’s before and behind

To have empty hands

For everything the present yearns to gift you

Brothers

2-12-16

I want to live with my lungs wide open

To sleep to the stars, spread like paint flecks across the void of space

I want the sun to leather my hide, for the cold to chew on my bones

To reach out before me with every stretching fiber of my being

At the unraveling road, at the vibrant hope of the present

 

And I have this glorious advantage

My brothers, meat and blood, who sing the same songs

We cry and writhe and try and fail

Together

This whole world is too small for us

We own the sea

We claim the night as our own

All the wild corners sit like big oysters

And we are the few who would trade our sleep and comfort to enjoy them

 

I want to live with my heart still bleeding

Feeling something inside, pain or joy or sickness

Just never nothing

Sometimes my heart grows an unhealthy shell

A husk produced by the day to day in and out of ‘normal’ life

Then God sends the rain

And three brothers bike up soap creek road to the flashes of lightning

My clothes stick to my burning chest

And the seed slowly breaks out of it’s casing

To seek the dampness and light

To reach upward towards morning

After lying dead in the dust

To become a bush, no, a tree

And trees we are three

Bending towards the son

Shading the little upstarts

And following the example of the sequoias before us

 

Someday, we will be withered old men

And young lovers will come to carve their names in our feet

Owls rest in our crooks and our bark comes crumbling apart

But miles above the forest we still sprout upward

To death we sprout upward

To heights only wild dreamers reach

To air only the ancients breathe

Together

 

Falling

12-6-12
Never wanted to make your heart mine
Just wanted to keep you from the pain
That I see peaking around the corner
Of the road you like to skirt

You mince your feet
And say it’s all ok
That gravity is overrated
But I feel you falling

You were so beautiful
You still are
If I stare at you long enough
I fall apart inside
Nothing else is made like you
Nothing compares

But you are a wild thing
You are free to posses those things you think you need
And end up needing them, being possessed by them

I wanted to keep you from this
But what could I do?
Could I have gotten inside of your brain?
Lived inside your heart?
You wrap your skin so tight
Tight as jeans
No one can tell you what to do
Because you live alone
And have no knocker on the door of your heart

Now all the fires of this life
Are eating up the perfect picture of your life
And all I can do is hold you
I could never hold you back
But I can hold you
When the smoke clears
And the choices have found their destinations
When all that you really wanted
Comes to be
And all that you really are
Steps out of the mirror and into the light

What can we do with these false realities?
These fantasies, dressed in lights and cash?
They told your soul where to go
And you followed them to the point of death

I saw you
Falling
A moment of serenity
Of weightlessness
That moment before the vase hits the ground
The freefall of a car breaking through the guardrail
So short lived
A breath
You were here
In a way you are now gone

But not forgotten

Though you never live the dreams He had for you
He can glue you back together
Set your spine
And deliver hope

But apart from Him we are sad and predictable rhythms
We were all dressed up for the party
But now the lights are out and there is just the pain
And the emptiness.
We are candle-less jack-o-lanterns
Rotting in a pile behind a kid’s house
Yesterdays engulf us

It was all bright and exciting
And edgy and dirty
It was like a new tattoo
Deep in the skin
Our hands reached over and felt it again and again
Something new
Something indelible
That deviance from the narrow
That infatuation with the kiltered

Today you can see it
If you can’t, I can
That we should have stayed at home all these years
That our seeking started at our destination
That those late nights and halogen lights
And headaches and puking in the street
All while trying to appear attractive to the opposite sex
Were wasted seconds
Breathes held for ransom

Girl, I know it hurts
These days
When truth stands naked in the streets
Calling for your ear
Your heart
When you’ve already given it away

But there is hope
Because the narrow road has many gates
And death is the only point of no return
So let go of these things that are killing you
And let you heart come home.

The Race and the Ruse

By Bethany Reams, 2014
It is always within
That the without
cannot explain.
There’s a system,
you see,
Its cogs and its pistons,
which routinise
and mechanise men.
Spirits torn
And bodies broken,
all to obtain
perfection,
when perfect men turn around
and descend the ladder again
for hopelessness.

Domesticated
In a cage of fear,
when we were born
to be wild,
behind glass that we could break
with a breath,
if we would just breathe,
would shatter with a word,
if we would but speak.

And we seldom wonder,
for we have always been told
we are the choosers.
We seldom wonder at anything
but these skin and bones.

Content to do as we’re told,
It all makes sense,
But these songs
keep rising
from our mouths,
Rising from the deepest place,
songs the world has never heard,
had never planned us to sing.
And we start to wonder,
in that moment,
if this skin is just a a suit,
if the race we’re running
is a ruse to keep us
from stopping and wondering,
if the strange pulse
we feel in our veins is
more than blood,
but spirit.

Doubtful

3-12-14
It is doubtful
That mouthfuls of change ever happened accidentally
That the bored and borderline slothful
Ever tumbled into transformation
Without cause
Without effort

No, instead the second law dictates
That since forbidden fruit we always tear up our rotors
Grinding into the breaks
Slowing down the momentum we once had
As we hurled towards peace

Today
It would seem that it takes steam
Grit and sweat to overcome death
That only the powerful and tenacious could take a breath
Of the other side of freedom
But instead

We find that even the most powerful among us hunger
That the heroes are left bleeding
That the strongest still need to feed on more
Than even their highest aims will take them

It’s something deeper than our skin
And something so close our hearts refuse to focus
The aim is an intensely vague blur
The longing is an ancient one

For home? For peace?
To just stop tearing ourselves apart?
To keep our feet out of our mouths
And fight for freedom at the borderlines
To admit to our blindness and watch helplessly
As years of concrete are obliterated
Our last hope at bridging the gap
Between this grating and the forever Not Yet

And we lie helpless
Unable to choose
Unable to blink or breathe or hunger
Until an almighty Wind blows in our hearts
And births us into righteousness

I was so hurting and battered
I was so thirsty and tattered
Until the One who saw through my lies
Respoke me from inside
And now all I can do is doubt
Everything that isn’t Him
As His blood coagulates into new skin
That slowly eats the scars of sin
Until my face looks more like Him

I doubt
I will ever be able to maintain the state He brought me to
Good thing His grace is stronger
I need this so badly.

Holy Beatle

His hope has burrowed earnestly
Through shells grown to keep out love

Primal defenses of shame
Are no match for the Zookeepers reign
Love conquers all things in time

Who We Are

12-25-12

Who we are

Is a strange mixture of what we actually are

And what we want to be

 

We are a mingling of hopes and regrets

We are an undiscovered hornet’s nest of possibilities

 

But the probability of us becoming

Something that has not entered our mind

Is nill

 

Yes, we may not be what we think we are

But we are what we think

And so our self perception tends to guide us

To direct us into the kinds of people we want to be

 

I will only disclose to you

Those things about myself

That make me appear as what I would like to be

 

And I will filter out and distance myself from

Anything that seems inconsistent with what I want to be

In this way we fulfill our own prophecies

 

We seek out others who will tell us we are what we think we are

And we avoid people who miscategorize us

Or stereotype us the wrong way

 

To be misunderstood is to be changed

And so we look for people who will act as mirrors

Not true mirrors, to show us who we are

But mirrors of the soul, who will affirm what we want to be

 

We all need that voice

Reminding us of childhood dreams

Reminding us of glory and wonder

And that life is made up of more than balanced budgets and washed clothes

That we are more than chemicals

That tragedies and epics are more real

Than physics and taxes

Because only they will last

And only by embracing them will we last with them

 

Yes, we all need that voice

That voice that foolishly spurs us on to creativity

That person who will assure us we are not mad

When probably we are

That gentle nudge from the nest

That girl who believes you can do anything

 

Without it we will never try

We will never fail

And we will never rise again

 

Without others to remind us of who we are

We allow the status quo to crush us

We let yesterday’s prescriptions ooze into our minds by osmosis

And portray us without our consent

 

Only in the dreaming do we break free

From what we are by nature

Into what we were made to be

 

And this conversation

Over coffee

This conversation

Filled with words that seem to grand

To be describing a life that is filled with automotive oil

And zits and defecation

This conversation is what keeps us from being torn apart

Or rather

It is what tears us apart and lets us be put back together

In the way we were made to be all along

It helps us to tune out the million little voices

That tell us we are dirt and nothing more

Controlled by hormones and steered by fate

That beer and dysfunctional relationship are our lot

That beauty is an illusion

And that lust is God

 

But this conversation pulls us out

And sets us on a rock

That is Christ

And teaches us that we are giants

We stand in the presence of a God outside of time

Who just walked with Adam

Parted the red sea

Spoke the world into existence

 

We take part in an epic

Yet our perception of it is slowly erased

By radio stations and divorce

By corn syrup and manipulative co-workers

The grind

The pressure

Makes us forget and lose sight

And in losing sight, lose hope

Of ever becoming that thing we once imagined we should be

Because it was the imagining and the hoping that was making us

Hope mixed with the power of the Holy Ghost is a strong thing

Stronger than death

Stronger than defeat

And this conversation is pulling me out

Again and again.

 

On the Mystery of the Incarnation

By Denise Levertov

It’s when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-like, God
(out of compassion for our ugly
failure to evolve) entrusts,
as guest, as brother,
the Word.

Broken

4-25-12
Marred charred
Shattered chards
Broken pieces
Jagged scars

Serve as windows
Seams and creases
Light spills through
The busted edges

Beauty refracts and spills
Through the damaged of the killed
Future failing to become past
But rising like a Phoenix from the ash

Resurrection of longings
Identity and belonging
Shining brighter than fear
Bringing something better near

Here
Pain and disfigurement
Become life’s new ornament
And what was shunned
Is used for enlightenment

We do not escape these tragedies
Or quietly sweep them under the rug
These characteristic homilies
Can’t be buried in the graves we dug

Instead they define the path we walk
And are proven true and beautiful
As God weaves them into the tapestry
Of potential stories that unfold
And spill into souls like sunlight gold

We hold
In our trials a better gift
The potential to stand like Job
With nothing left
And sing songs
Like two men locked in a jail
The earthquake shakes along to songs
And a suicidal jailer is given hope

How can these bewilderments
Lend themselves to the grand scheme?
Only the Lord God knows.

Tu Ne Quaesieris

For all the lore of Lodge and Myers
I cannot heal my torn desires,
Nor hope for all that man can speer
To make the riddling earth grow clear.
Though it were sure and proven well
That I shall prosper, as they tell,
In fields beneath a different sun
By shores where other oceans run,
When this live body that was I
Lies hidden from the cheerful sky,
Yet what were endless lives to me
If still my narrow self I be
And hope and fail and struggle still,
And break my will against God’s will,
To play for stakes of pleasure and pain
And hope and fail and hope again,
Deluded, thwarted, striving elf
That through the window of my self
As through a dark glass scarce can see
A warped and masked reality?
But when this searching thought of mine
Is mingled in the large Divine,
And laughter that was in my mouth
Runs through the breezes of the South,
When glory I have built in dreams
Along some fiery sunset gleams,
And my dead sin and foolishness
Grow one with Nature’s whole distress,
To perfect being I shall win,
And where I end will Life begin.

-C. S. Lewis from his first published work, Spirits in Bondage